Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion
Edited by Ramzy Baroud
Preface by Noam Chomsky
288 pages
Publisher - Cune; 1st edition (January 2003)

Reading Searching Jenin is like reading a nightmare. Each chapter is another person with another terrible tale to tell. Yet, they are true stories told by people living in Jenin when the Israeli army invaded in early April, 2002, an invasion we were told was not an invasion but a strangely labelled "incursion." It's a story by women and men, by old and young. We in the rest of the world heard about it, about the accusations and counter accusations. We were appalled by the refusal of the Israeli government to allow the UN to investigate reports of war crimes and massacres, and even more appalled by the inability (refusal?) of the world community to overrule Israel. But, answers were not forthcoming and we were all left wondering, as Norman G. Finkelstein asks in his small piece in the book, "Exactly what did happen in Jenin?"

Searching Jenin is about family members being taken away and others left behind, waiting to find out what happened. It's about the deaths they find when they are finally able to emerge from their homes. It's about the dying people who were refused medical care, as no ambulances were allowed into the city, and about the dead people whose bodies remained in place for days before any of the city services were able to function and remove their bodies. It is also about the survivors -- how they ran from house to house trying to find refuge from the Israeli army.

Strangely enough, it isn't the deaths that remain in your mind. Rather, it's the small personal stories. Like the 17-year-old boy who is told to take off his clothes in front of his family. He is embarrassed, and tells his mother he is ashamed to strip in front of his sisters. Yet there is no choice. The soldiers then throw him down handcuffed and unclothed, onto a pile of broken glass.

Searching Jenin relates the collective experience of Palestinians living in Jenin during the invasion. A small cadre of volunteers enlisted by editor Ramzy Baroud persuaded individuals traumatised by their experience to talk about what happened to them for the purpose of this book. In a city where journalists were refused admission, only the residents of Jenin and the invading army really know what happened. In this book of testimonies the residents tell their story.

Read this book to understand what happened. It is not saddled with arguments about what is a massacre, what isn't one. It is the experience of people who have been through far too much, told in their own voices. Read it and you can understand what the war is about.

A list of the confirmed deaths in Jenin, photographs, and interviews of outside people are also included. But the real story is in the words of the people of Jenin.